So, I wouldn't call myself a seasoned player (I haven't been around for years like some of you people), but I've been playing for the last year across 4 unis, and I can definitely recognise the importance of keeping fleet speeds similar. The bump in economy and research speeds are welcome by all players, but fleet speeds and additional factors like deut consumption %, DF %, DiDf, probe storage and galaxy numbers are all things that can also cause discontent.
In general, there really should be 3 different servers, all with different fleet speeds. The slowest server I've played was at 2x war speed, and coming from only 4x war speeds it demotivated me to fleet, but I could be a collector and play in peace. There's a lot of people that do not have time to put up with a 4x war speed, and god forbid playing a 5-6x war speed, I wouldn't want to play there myself.
The speeds should be more equally spaced out to account for our friends on the slower servers, so maybe having 3 servers on 2x, 4x and 6x could be an option. If the fastest a server will be set at is 5x, it should have at least something more interesting going for it compared to the 4x one, like DiDF or something along those lines.
On a last note, please never make a server again that does not support ACS.
And a last question, that I'm not sure was brought up earlier on - would the new target unis have lifeforms? I've avoided playing on those servers thus far, so I'd rather have the choice of whether or not I get lifeforms.